


Painful

by kerlin



Category: Alias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything hurt. Everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painful

Everything hurt. Everything.

She'd felt this way after missions before - far too often for her preferences, because it was doubly difficult to conceal the soreness from Francie and Will. She had to concentrate on walking in a straight line, on the smooth movement of shoulder and elbow to reach for the cereal down from the top cabinet without betraying the deep purple splash across her bicep. For a week she wore shirts that didn't show an inch of skin when she stretched up so that no one would see the white bandages wrapped around her torso, holding bruised ribs in place as best they could.

Vaughn offered her an appreciative, wry twist of his lips, when confronted with her stiffness, and hidden deep in his eyes was a grief and worry that she ducked her head away from. His fingers tightened around the coffee cup, and as she lowered herself to sit on the crate - slowly and painfully, betraying the extent of her injuries to another person for the first time since Dixon's worrying glance on the plane ride home when she stood to stow her carry-on.

There was a certain strange intimacy to it, to his impassive gaze as he watched her sit. It was as if he saw through the expensive material of the pinstriped suit, beneath to the greens and blues and yellows of several day old bruises and the scabbed over gashes and rashes. For a moment it was his fingers and not his eyes that took measure of her wounds, trailed over them with light whispering touches and then dug in deeper to unknot the pulled muscles.

So close that she raised her head quickly, and met his eyes watching her. She blinked first, turned her head to the side and pondered the chain-link fence over his shoulder as she described her impressions of SD-6's newest field agent. He was still looking at her, steadily, and she put a hand down on her thigh, fingers splayed to cover one of the largest of her bruises, holding him there as surely as if she'd intertwined her fingers with his.


End file.
